


and the point of salvation (never comes)

by nonbinarywithaknife (littleboxes)



Series: me sobbing about critical role [19]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series), The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Angst, Angst and Tragedy, Blood and Gore, Emotional Hurt, Episode: s02e08 And the Point of Salvation, Gen, Heavy Angst, Heavy Drinking, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide, Time Loop, Undead
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-13
Updated: 2019-02-13
Packaged: 2019-10-27 15:36:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17769506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/littleboxes/pseuds/nonbinarywithaknife
Summary: "Gods, she doesn’t know how they’re going to get through this. Jester’s the last of them alive. She’s trapped, in a corner, desperately brandishing her lollipop at the horde approaching her, and the betrayal on her face as Nott stands still, watching it happen from the shadows, burns itself into her brain, over and over and over, and she keeps failing. And failing. And failing. Until she’s sure that she won’t be able to sleep ever again without seeing the entrails of her friends lining the ground, without feeling the grip of hundreds of hands on her body, tearing her apart."





	and the point of salvation (never comes)

**Author's Note:**

> this is based on an episode of the librarians, where ezekiel is forced to lead his friends through a video game-like "escort mission" except, every time they die, he's the only that remembers the previous loop. nott is ezekiel. she does not get the benefit of forgetting, at the end  
> edited 4/26/19

_She watches Caleb be ripped apart by the undead for- for- she doesn’t know. Maybe the five hundredth time, maybe the millionth. They’ve all started to blur together. But it should disturb her how familiar the sight is. How it makes her feel both numb and like a live wire, nerves sparking with pain. Gods, she doesn’t know how they’re going to get through this. Jester’s the last of them alive._

_She’s trapped, in a corner, desperately brandishing her lollipop at the horde approaching her, and the betrayal on her face as Nott stands still, watching it happen from the shadows, burns itself into her brain, over and over and over, and she keeps failing. And failing. And failing. Until she’s sure that she won’t be able to sleep ever again without seeing the entrails of her friends lining the ground, without feeling the grip of hundreds of hands on her body, tearing her apart._

* * *

 

She watches, horrified, as Yasha steps forward to meet the snarling, rabid looking creature, only to have a hoard of them pour from the hallways. The group tries, they try _so hard_ , but Caleb’s the first one to fall. Of course he is. Because he’s soft, and squishy, and _not meant_ to fistfight undead face-to-face. Caduceus is next. Then Fjord, Beau, Jester, Yasha, and Nott. Her last thought is that at least she won’t have to live with her failure.

And then she wakes up, running with the rest of the gang recklessly into the deathtrap that is that hallway, and she doesn’t know how, or why, or what- but she shouts, shouts for them to stop, and thankfully, they do, the sheer panic in her voice stopping them. She thinks about telling them about her- vision? No, that doesn’t seem right. Experience. Her experience. But she knows that will just take up valuable time and Jester doesn’t have the spell slots to spare for zone of truth. So, instead she warns them the hallways are trapped, and hopes they’ll assume it’s a rogue thing. They do, although she catches Caduceus giving her a weird look, but she’s pretty sure he won’t bring it up until later, if he ever does.

And, thankfully, with a bit of planning, and her knowledge, they get through the hallway. She finds a door that actually isn’t even hidden all that well, but isn’t particularly visible if you’re running headlong into the hall, and they go around the hoard. Things are okay, for a while after that. Nobody’s screaming, or being ripped into pieces, and Nott’s sure that if she drinks enough, she’ll wake up tomorrow with no memory of this whole mess.

And then they encounter the door. It seems simple enough, just pick the lock, move forward. Until- until it’s not, and she her lockpicks break, even though she _knows_ that should’ve opened it, and there is an _awful_ screeching noise, and, and, _something_ fast, and slippery, and black as pitch shoots out from an opening on the ceiling and all she hears are the screams of her friends before her world dissolves into sharp sparks of pain and then, nothing.

* * *

 

Then she’s awake, and running, again, and screaming for them to stop, and then having a panic attack because _this already happened_. She can’t play this off as a vision, as an _experience_ , and if she’s really done this before than she watched her friends be ripped apart in front of her, her failure _killed_ her _friends_ and she can’t _breathe_ , and then someone is patting her back and murmuring soothingly in Zemnian and she remembers they’re not even past the hallway, yet. And the group is staring at her, and she tries to explain, but she knows she’s not the most persuasive person when she’s at her best, and she’s still sort of having a panic attack but less all consuming and trying very, _very_ hard to not grab her flask and drink until she passes out, so they give her looks of pity and disbelief, and tell her and Caleb to stay back and take a minute, they’ll scout out the hallway ahead.

And Caleb is giving her very concerned looks, but she wasn’t able to warn them, and she tried to get up, to stop them, but then she hears the snarls, then the screams, and she knows what’s happening, what’s going to happen, and she can’t let Caleb die, she can’t watch him die, _not again_ , and so she pulls out the shortsword that feels foreign in her hands and lunges at the undead bullying their way down the corridor. She feels her flesh being ripped off as she dies, but she hadn’t had to watch Caleb die, and she is  selfishly satisfied as her soul leaves the material plane.

And then she wakes up.

And she’s running, and running, and running. Sometimes they makes it through the crowd in the hallway through sheer force, and they’re killed instead by the searing fire trap that activates a few feet further past the edge of the horde. Usually, though, she can make them stop, convince them to go through the door. Eventually after she fails and fails and fails and fails to open the door, she gets it. She still doesn’t know what the creature, if it can be called that, is, that murders her and her friends every time. She doesn’t want to know.

After the first time she opens the door successfully, she thinks that maybe, maybe, they’re near the end. Really the only thing that they have to cross is a yawning cavern, that has only a narrow stone bridge connecting across a gaping abyss. There are things that look like pods hanging from the ceiling, swaying ominously. After a whispered discussion, they send Owl-Frumpkin across first, as a test.

He makes it over fine, and his coo echoes across the cave. They’re in the middle of the bridge when Beau stubs her toe. Such a simple thing- Beau, cursing just louder than normal at the pain. For a second, everything is deathly still. Then the cavern erupts. The pods explode into bat-like creatures that dive bomb the hapless group, while shrieking a terrible scream. They manage to hold them off for a while, but once their ears start bleeding, they know they’re done for. They huddle together, defenseless on the middle of the thin bridge, as the creatures pick them off.

And it happens over and over and _over_.

* * *

 

Sometimes, she tells them the truth. That they’re in some sort of time loop, or never ending nightmare, or something. Sometimes she doesn’t. Sometimes, they attribute all her weird knowledge and warnings as rogue things, or goblin quirks, or some mix of the two and Nott’s general skittishness. Sometimes they don’t accept that, and a bitter round of questioning ensues.

Sometimes, when she tells them, they believe her. They listen when she warns them, they’re hyper aware of their surroundings. Jester and Caleb give her worried looks that she ignores, because she needs to keep them alive. Sometimes, they don’t believe her. Sometimes they tell her to take a rest with Caleb. Sometimes they leave her behind, as a liability. She doesn’t know what causes the little variations, but the theme is always the same. She can usually tell what they’re going to say in conversation.

Around the hundredth or so loop, she screams for them to stop, and then just starts predicting the conversation. It’s not hard. It’s worryingly easy, in fact. They always give her these looks, when she does it. She realizes that she sounds rather odd. Like a soulless echo in a canyon. They always believe her when she does it. But they don’t look at her the same. She’s not sure if it’s better or worse.

One loop, she decides that she simply won’t do it. She refuses to go along with the group, sitting down as guzzling from her flask until she is absolutely hammered. She answers all their incredulous questions, with a cutting honesty she knows she wouldn’t have managed sober. She tells them about how it feels when they question her sanity. How it feels to have to watch them die, over and over and over and over. How it _feels_ , to be ripped apart, limb from limb, and eaten alive by undead, and then to wake up running seconds later.

They die quickly, in that loop. She’s glad (Isn't that horrible- to wish your friends a quick death? She thinks it's a mercy.) She wouldn’t want them to remember that. It would mess with the group dynamics, as Fjord would say.

Somewhere around the thousandth loop, she thinks, she stopped tracking them ages ago, she takes out her shortsword and stabs herself in the gut. She makes sure that Jester is distracted, so she’s not healed right away, but they do notice. Caleb is frantic, so is Jester, and Fjord and Beau are screaming at her, why the _fuck would you do this-, Nott, what are you thinking?!_

“I don’t wan'na watch you die any'more,” she slurs, and watches the horror dawn on their faces as the blackness takes her again.

Again and again and again and again and again and again and again. Nothing she tries works, nothing works, they _always_ die, with burning sparks or ripping limbs or deafening shrieks and razor-talons. Always, always, over and over and over again.

Until they don’t. Until she gets them through the tunnel, and past the door, and finally, finally, _finally_ across the _gods_ -forsaken bridge. And they stand outside the cave entrance, jumping when it seals itself closed like it was never there. And Nott watches, numb, as her friends celebrate, like everything is fine. Normal. No different than any of the other caves they’ve combed through, if a little straightforward in its simplicity. And Nott-

She sways a little, and vomits harshly on the ground. Thinks of bodies on the ground, pooling red, thinks of piles of impossible to recognize gore, thinks of being ripped apart and eaten alive, and starts to laugh.

She can hear the bitter ringing of her own hysteria, can hear how it brings the group to a grinding halt. Hears their worried questions, can feel Caleb’s hand gently shaking her shoulder. And thinks about bodies falling into the abyss, and deafening screeches, and a black blur moving so, so, _so quickly_ , and thinks of burning sparks electrifying her _mind_ and turning her insides to dust. And she laughs, and laughs, and laughs because, because-

_What else can she do?_

**Author's Note:**

> yes, nott does go a little insane when they escape. yes, it does give caleb Very Intense flashbacks. yes, the mighty nein are all very worried and disturbed. poor, poor nott.


End file.
